


right in front of me (or maybe you're in disguise)

by phae



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Remix, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-08 19:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11087985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phae/pseuds/phae
Summary: Clint's soulmark comes in when he's just shy of seven.





	right in front of me (or maybe you're in disguise)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [desert_neon (sproutgirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bond Status](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4278576) by [desert_neon (sproutgirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sproutgirl/pseuds/desert_neon). 



> Title is from Natasha Bedingfield's _Soulmates_.

The guy they send in looks like an accountant. Not any kind of successful one, no, instead they throw one at him who seems to be languishing in mediocrity. It’s all there in the oversized, off-the-rack suit, the scuffed loafers, the bland tie that’s been moved off-center by too many tugs and readjustments. A nobody, that’s the glaring impression Clint’s getting from this guy as he swings open the off-white door to the interrogation room they chucked Clint into over an hour ago.

Granted, that’s really all that Clint needs to figure out that this guy is in fact a Big Deal at whatever shady government agency he’s run afoul of now.

“Mr. Barton,” the suit begins as he tosses down a manila folder, not too thick but also not too thin. Going by the cover, it’s Hawkeye’s Greatest Hits, at least so far as these spooks are aware. “I’m Agent Phillip Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division.”

_SHIELD. Fucking perfect_ , he thinks to himself. And in addition to that nightmare, they’ve stuck him in a room with a fucking _Phillip._ He doesn’t bother to fight the instinctive downward curl of his mouth at that _goddamned name_ \--it’s a shitty omen haunting his every step, he swears--just lets it fuel his spite as the suit lets the moment drag out long and heavy, like he’s waiting for something, looking for that telling spark of recognition that the movies all say Unbondeds wait on bated breath to behold. And fuck _that_ noise right on out of here. “Good for you,” Clint snarls. “D’you want a fucking medal?”

The agent blinks blandly back at him, finally moving to sit across from Clint after a charged moment and flipping open the file with a practiced air of nonchalance. “It says here you took out twelve men in under two minutes. And yet only nine arrows were found at the scene.”

Not Clint’s best day, but still better than damn near anyone else’s. “I got skills, man.”

“So I hear,” he replies dryly, staring Clint down blankly like he thinks he’s actually going to beat Clint into submission using the fucking _silent treatment_.

Clint just scowls at the man, refusing to blink, until he backs down and continues, “Let’s discuss your future.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to fire back, _Let’s not_. But this guy doesn’t look to be inclined to take Clint’s opinion on the matter into consideration. Fucking figures. Clint’s never met a damn Phillip that wasn’t looking to screw him over in the end.

* * *

Clint’s soulmark comes in when he’s just shy of seven. At first, he thinks it’s a bug bite with the way it itches incessantly, driving him to claw at that hard-to-reach spot over his shoulder blade for even a hint of relief. It bothers him all day--all through math class, and recess, and lunch, and reading, and on the bus ride home. He tears into the bathroom as soon as he’s through the door, tearing off his shirt and turning his back to the mirror over the sink, balancing on his tiptoes to see.

His whole left shoulder is red and puffy from where he’s been pawing at it all day, but there, in the middle of all the splotchy skin, is a name blocked out in bold, black letters: _Phillip._ It takes him a second to realize what it is, ‘cause he’s only heard tales from Barney about some of the middle schoolers getting theirs in and bragging about them in the halls between classes. He’s never even seen Mama’s, much less Dad’s. But it’s there, right behind where his heart sits, clear as day: his soulmark.

The smile’s a reflex (he’s not alone, there’s somebody out there meant _just for him_ ) and it takes over his face before reality has a chance to set in. But then, of course, it does, and like with everything in Clint’s short life, it rips his scrap of happiness away before he even gets a chance to enjoy it, because it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact his soulmark is a _boy’s name_.

“Fucking faggots,” he hears his dad saying as the men who live in a neat little house a few streets over walk their dog around the neighborhood, not even holding hands.

“Oh for the love of--” he hears his mama muttering to herself with a scowl as she furiously turns the radio dial to anything else but that _Bowie freak._

“Gross! Don’t be _gay!_ ” he hears Barney exclaiming as he shoves Clint away for getting too clingy, scared after a nightmare and desperate for a hug.

Clint’s fingers dig into his shoulder, the jagged ends of his chewed up nails pulling at the inked skin, and he realizes: no good will ever come of his soulmark.

* * *

Two months into their unfortunate stint as handler and asset, Coulson still hasn’t brought soulmarks up, hasn’t even mentioned them in that absentminded way most people do, casually assuming that everybody must be on the hunt for The One if they’re not already attached.

They land a case hunting down an assassin who lures her victims in by flashing an artificial soulmark (because fuck it all if the majority of the population aren’t all suckers willing to get roped into the usual love-at-first-sight tripe that goes hand-in-hand with soulmarks) and that’s an obvious opening to milk Clint for the holes in his spotty romantic history if ever there was one, with Coulson camped out in a modest hotel room for the duration of the op, a calming but infrequent voice in Clint’s ear as he stalks their mark across rooftops throughout the city. But not a word on the subject outside of how it pertains to their mission parameters.

Clint’s starting to wonder if he’d read that first meeting all wrong, if Coulson was just looking to sweat him out, to coax an introduction out of Clint even though he’d known damn well who Clint was at that point.

But the more attention he pays to Coulson trying to decipher the puzzle, the more he learns the man, and that man never, with one notable exception, introduces himself as Agent Phillip Coulson. Agent Coulson, yeah, that one’s pretty standard. And when he’s trying to make an impression, it’s Agent Phil Coulson. But he does not, ever, use the name Phillip. Even when he’s signing mission reports or equipment expenditures, Phil he remains. (Clint’s maybe broken a few protocols regarding clearance level material to verify that one, but the fact stands.)

Back at Clint’s intake, when they’d gotten to that section on the paperwork--which they wouldn’t even let him fill out for himself, the shitheads--Clint hadn’t said a word. He’d let them scan him and search him, catalog all his bumps and bruises with just enough fight to signify a token protest, but he refused to give them a straight answer about any soulmark.

They’d labelled him _Unbonded, Unmarked_ in the end. It went on the hardcopy and digital version both like that. They had, however, included a note in there for the shrink they kept making him appointments with, suggesting that she “delve into the recruit’s reticence to discuss his soulmark or the lack thereof.”

At least he never has to worry that Coulson’s in on that bullshit, too.

* * *

“What’s that?” Barney demands as Clint’s changing into his PJs one night. Clint startles because Barney was supposed to be in the bathroom brushing his teeth, not sneaking up on him.

Clint mumbles, “S’nothing.” He fists the hem of his night shirt, tugging it down further than it wants to go.

“Sure as shit looked like something,” Barney scoffs, crowding Clint back against his twin bed.

“Charles Bernard!” Mama hollers from the hall as she raps her knuckles on the door sharply. “Where on Earth did you pick up language like that?”

“From Dad,” Barney calls back defiantly, jutting out his chin and puffing up his chest even though Clint’s the only one who can see.

Mama sighs her usual weary sigh and moves on down towards the kitchen without another word.

Clint’s still watching the door to make sure she doesn’t come back, even though he knows she never does, when Barney tackles him onto the bed, knocking his elbow into the rickety post. Groaning as pain radiates out from his funny bone, Clint doesn’t have much of a chance against Barney as he pins him to the bed on his belly, yanking Clint’s shirt collar down so he can see.

Clint swats at him with his other arm, tries to kick out but his legs are caught under Barney’s. “You’re chokin’ me! Get off!”

“The hell is that!?” Barney hisses, shoving him down harder into the threadbare mattress as he clambers off Clint’s back.

Clint rolls until he’s backed into the corner where his bed meets the wall. “It’s nothing no one needs to know about!”

“What, you think no one’s gonna ever see it, you idiot? You couldn’t even keep it hidden from me!”

Clint’s nose scrunches up as he pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around tight. “Well, that’s only ‘cause we have to share a room!”

“What’re you planning to do come summer, huh? Just sweat through everything we own?”

“I’ll figure something out!”

“S’there even a brain between your ears?” Barney huffs, kicking the stool they use as a little table between their beds and toppling over Clint’s plastic cup that he keeps there for when he wakes up thirsty in the middle of the night and can’t risk waking Dad to go to the bathroom across the hall. “There ain’t no hiding it! You gotta get rid of that damn thing. If you’ve got a soulmark so young, it means your match has gotta be at least ten years older’n you. What’re you ever gonna want with some old man, dipshit?”

Huddling down further into himself, Clint mutters, “I guess…”

Barney nods like he’s won some major concession out of Clint. His tone is full of all the confidence and wisdom of an arrogant preteen when he declares, “We’ll just hafta burn it off.”

* * *

Clint’s never seen Coulson’s soulmark, and he’s been looking.

His personnel records were fuck all help. Everything Clint was able to get his hands on was redacted to hell or directly conflicting something else he’d found. The one mention he’d found that was clearly marked Bond Status just had a big red CLASSIFIED in the field next to it.

They’ve had to strip in close proximity enough times on missions that Clint’s had ample opportunity to surreptitiously conduct his own visual search for a mark, but he’s never caught even a glimpse of a name wrapped around any part of Phil, not even a scar big enough to obscure one like how Clint’s does.

Except about a year into their partnership, they’re in the middle of a shitshow op, bullets flying in literally every direction while Clint tries to zero in on their actual targets to stick some arrows where the sun don’t shine just because they’ve pissed him off royally at this point, when Hill, hunkered down behind their measly cover, gets grazed by a bullet.

It’s the quick spray of blood just in front of him that alerts Clint to the injury, ‘cause Hill is a stone cold badass who ain’t got time for giving in to a little thing like pain, and she doesn’t make a sound or even pause in her return fire. Clint rounds on her to check if it’s serious or not, and that’s when he catches sight of a soulmark, just the edge and an ‘a’ peeking around the curve of her wrist, as a fucking modified nano mask glitches in and out, pixels rippling up and down her forearm.

After that, Clint stops looking (for the most part, sometimes he still catches himself shooting Coulson a discreet once over even though he knows it’s useless) for a mark on Coulson. As disappointing as it is to learn that he’s never going to spot it unless Coulson deliberately shows it to him, discovering that SHIELD agents actively disguise their soulmarks with next-gen tech goes a long way to reassuring Clint that Coulson does in fact have a mark, and that the CLASSIFIED hiding his designation isn’t there in place of Unmarked.

Why that’s so reassuring though...well.

All that soulmark crap, it’s bullshit. Clint’s seen that proven time and time again--his parents and Barney just the most prominent examples in a long list of encounters with ill-matched _soulmates_. Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop Clint from slowly but surely falling for _Phil_ , nevermind how much he detests the idea of _Phillip_.

Phil is the voice in his ear guiding him home when things go hell in a handbasket. Phil is the safety net he knows will catch him if he manages to fuck something up. Phil is the one leading the charge to bust in and rescue him from a super shady group of human traffickers, even though Clint was managing the whole escape fine on his own, really, he _was_. Phil is a comforting presence, typing softly in the background while Clint dozes on his office couch. Phil is a telling silence when Clint starts cracking corny jokes over the comms on long ops. Phil is soft smiles over shitty canned food when they’re holed up in even shittier safehouses.

So maybe the universe is onto something after all, at least so far as Clint’s mark is concerned. _Maybe_. Really, it all comes down to if Coulson actually has his name hidden somewhere on his body. And that starts looking less and less likely the longer Clint knows the man, until it finally comes to a head, as these things always do, on a FUBAR mission in Kyrgyzstan of all places.

One of the last things Clint actually remembers from that op, with Phil’s arms wrapped around him for all the wrong reasons, is thinking that it was at least a pretty picturesque place to bite the dust.

What he doesn’t remember is what he said there, when Phil was holding him and he was dying. He knows he had to have said something, because he’s sitting in medical in the painful aftermath with Sitwell doing his debrief because Coulson has damn well _recused himself_ and resigned as his handler, effective immediately.

And while he can’t actually recall what sent Coulson running far, far away from him, he can certainly imagine. Clint’s always gotten sappy and oddly poetic when he’s on death’s bed, which has happened far too often for his general liking. So it was probably something along the lines of _“Tried to erase it, but your name’s still written over my heart,”_ and _“I wish my name was written on yours,”_ followed closely by _“I know it’s weird, but I really wanna kiss the laugh lines ‘round your mouth.”_

That’s all just speculation, of course, ‘cause Clint _can’t remember_ , Coulson’s avoiding him, and Nat can only vouch for the part before she left to find medical supplies and after she got back with help.

Whatever it was that managed to slip out while he was too loopy from the blood loss to put a stop to it, it was way more than Phil was willing to hear. Clint left his heart on the floor with the rest of his innards, all of them too damaged to bother holding on to, and it serves him right for ever daring to dream that his Phil could be  _Phillip_.

* * *

Mama screams bloody murder when she gets home early and catches them still at it, Barney with the lighter in his hand and Clint chomping down on an old cheap belt that won’t fit either of them anymore, tears streaming free down his face.

She rushes Clint to the hospital, but her frantic demands to know what the ever-loving hell they thought they were doing doesn’t drag the truth out of them. Neither do the nurses’ sympathetic eyes or the lollipops they doll out after coming by to change Clint’s bandages. And the same goes for Dad’s rage, even once he tears into them both with a belt made of real leather for tricking Mama into wasting money they don't have taking him to see a doctor.

All either one of them will ever say on the matter was that there was a tick dug into Clint’s skin, even though it’s obvious that not a one of them believes it. The burn’s much too big for that, stretched as it is across the whole of his left shoulder blade, and there's different degrees of burn to the whole patch from where Barney had to go back over it again and again to make sure he'd got the whole name wiped clean while Clint struggled not to pass out from the pain. But they stick to their story and none of the adults ever come even close to guessing the truth.

Later on, much further down the road, Clint’ll forgive Barney for a lot of things he really shouldn’t, on account of that one lie he refused to let go of, back when they were kids.

* * *

Clint’s trying to swim up out of the haze that set in right after Natasha brained him but good. There’d been a time there where everything was clear as crystal, no distractions, no obstacles he couldn’t easily overcome. He knows that wasn’t real, though. Well, it _was_ , but it wasn’t _right_ , not how existence is supposed to go, stripped of all emotion and inhibition.

So the sludgy mess he’s trying to work around now is a good thing, honestly, in the grand scheme of it all. Means that fucking thing isn’t influencing him anymore. It’s out of his system and now he’s just got to survive the bitch of a hangover Loki left him with in it’s wake.

He keeps going in and out of lucidity, though. One second he’s aware enough to know Natasha’s at his side and that he’s been strapped down, but then it all slips away and he’s lost in blue-tinged memories of minutes that lasted days and days that lasted years, Loki’s voice in his ear whispering over and over, _“You have heart.”_

The only thing that seems to help is focusing on the physical, which is made marginally easier by the bitching pain shooting from the back of his shoulder and pulsing down to the rest of him. It was the draw-weight, he thinks fleetingly. Loki kept demanding more than he had to give, and he’d overexerted all the muscles. Now it was biting him in the ass along with everything else--but honing in on that pain keeps him in the room with Nat, and for that at least he can be thankful.

Once he’s back on the battlefield, fighting against motherfucking _aliens_ for crying out loud, the pain gets so bad it feels like his shoulder’s burning from the inside out. But he keeps drawing back his bowstring, keeps firing as they keep flying out of the hole in the sky. At one point, after he’s crashed through a window, he lands on it, and the pain is so intense he swears he goes blind with it.

It not until days later, after the pain meds have dulled everything but the constant ache in his shoulder, after they’ve buried Phil’s empty coffin and he reaches back with his right hand absently to massage at the spot behind where his heart sits, that he finally puts two and two together and gets, “Oh.”

* * *

Barney meets his match after they throw their lot in with the circus. Jacquelyn, her name is.

They do nothing but argue. Always and forever, ‘til death may they part.

They only ever shut up when they’re sticking their tongues down each other’s throats, but Clint’s had the misfortune of walking in on them enough to know that’s just as much a fight as all the rest of it is.

For all they’ve never actually hit each other, that doesn’t make the damage any less real or permanent, Clint knows. Because once upon a time, Barney used to catch of glimpse of his soulmark on the inside of his wrist, and he’d smile despite all the things he had to say to Clint on the subject of soulmates. But since actually meeting his, Barney’s taken to wearing long, baggy sleeves that nearly cover his fingers, and a thick wristband when it gets too hot out for him to stomach those. On the off chance he does catch sight of the name inked into his skin, his face goes pale and sickly, and he’s in an even worse mood than usual for days on end.

The one time Barney’s drunk enough to actually talk about it without any prompting from Clint, he says him and Jackie are just like how Mama and Dad used to be--screaming then kissing then screaming some more. He says Jackie’s just like Mama was, all fire and no conviction, and like hell is he ever going to let himself become like Dad, constantly trying to stomp that fire out.

Barney leaves Jackie (and Trickshot, and the circus, and Clint--that's the order he tended to put them in) behind in the dust kicked up by a stolen Oldsmobile one sticky summer evening on the road from Georgia to Tennessee, no explanations, no goodbyes.

Jackie, who'd never bothered hiding the name curving around the ball of her shoulder before, had in fact gone out of her way to keep it on constant display, trades her tank tops in for hoodies and stops speaking altogether.

* * *

“You seriously dumped it all, huh?” Clint calls back over the couch where he’s sprawled in an artful slouch. It’s a posture specifically designed to keep all weight and contact off his lower back, the skin of which looks more like ground meat than anything else right now. His main three exits out of his so-called safehouse had all been blocked by Hydra fuckers, and it’d been a good long while since he’d last tried to cling to the undercarriage of a moving vehicle without any kind of harness or other equipment to aid the way.

Natasha’s frighteningly pointy stilettos don’t make a sound as she rounds the couch to perch on the arm by him. “There wasn’t time to pick and choose,” she replies dryly. Her shrug is light and nonchalant, but there’s a barely visible tightness around her eyes that tells Clint she’s feeling guilty about it even if she’ll never let that influence her field decisions.

Clint reaches out for her hand and tugs her down next to him, not bothering to hide his wince when the move jostles his back, which is Hawkeye and Black Widow-speak for _all’s forgiven._

“Well, now everything SHIELD ever bothered to put in our files is going to get plastered all over the web, for every pre-teen with a smartphone to peruse at their leisure. I hope you’ve prepared yourself for the eerily accurate fanfiction.” The grin he shoots her way is more strained than teasing, but she doesn’t call him on it ‘cause she’s nice like that.

“No one’s brave enough to risk my displeasure. You, on the other hand--I’m sure they’ll find evidence enough to satisfy their theories that you’re sleeping with everyone in the Tower.”

“The tales of my prowess will be glorious,” he muses lightly before growing somber. “You really didn’t restrict any of it? Even the super classified, Eyes Only shit? That’ll get messy fast.”

Natasha goes unnaturally still next to him, even for her. “Clint.” Her voice comes out sharp, a hint of pleading around the edges that he’s only ever heard her use on marks before. “Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t go looking for those answers. We buried him, you have to stop trying to dig him back up.”

“Yeah,” he agrees with a gusty sigh. “I won’t, Nat. Promise.”

Granted, Clint only manages to keep that promise for a measly five hours, and because JARVIS is a million times better than Jeeves ever was, he pulls up Coulson’s personnel file within seconds of Clint breaking down enough to ask after it.

And so the answer Clint’s been looking for is right there, floating on a blue-tinged holoscreen in all it’s declassified glory.

There was a while there, after Coulson split up the band and things got awkward all around, where Clint started wondering if Phil’d already found his match, was happily bonded even though he’d never let a hint slip to Clint about it. Clint would lay in bed, not sleeping, curled into a ball and berating himself for being such a sad sucker that he fell for Phil anyway.

But dwelling on that hurt worse than Phil leaving him behind had, the thought that they hadn’t even really been friends because that was the sort of shit you shared with friends.

This, though--this is a million times worse than even that.

_Bond Status: Unbonded, Unrequited_

Because not only is he the pathetic little shit who’s pining after a man who never had his name in the first place and a _dead man_ at that, but Phil had been in the exact same spot, alone in a world of soulmates, in love with someone who would never love him back. ( _Ha_ , he thinks, on the verge of hysterics. _We match._ )

Needless to say, Clint then gets very,  _very_ drunk.

That’s how Steve finds him, probably hours later: on the couch in one of Stark’s many common rooms, surrounded by beer and liquor bottles, the holoscreen still there because Clint can’t bring himself to look away.

Steve drops down next to him and tosses a thick manila file on the coffee table. _Looks like mine did_ , Clint muses fuzzily, and for a second he can feel cold steel clenching around his wrists, hear the chains rattle when he shifts his weight even just a little.

Steve snatches up the bottle of rum Clint’s got balancing on his knee, eyes the label and half-gone contents with a frown, then tips it back and finishes off the bottle in three large gulps.

Clint just watches him for a moment, the weary slant to his shoulders and the glassy look in his eyes, then leans over far enough to rifle through the collection of bottles he’d amassed when he got this pity party started, selecting the highest proof vodka Stark’s got on offer.

He hands it over then grabs himself another beer from the steadily depleting sixpack and holds it up towards Steve, neck extended. “What’re we drinking to?”

Staring back at him, blinking sluggishly, it takes Steve a bit to raise his bottle and clink it against Clint’s. But once that’s done, it’s like the floodgates open, and Steve’s rasping out, “My name was on his left arm. Right where they put that fucking _star_.”

The rage in his tone is banked only by how numb the shock’s left him, Clint figures, ‘cause the emotion’s pure as fire in his eyes.

“Took me forever to realize Buck was mine, you know?” Steve’s voice catches, and a lone tear slips out of his eyes and slides down the curve of his cheek. “‘Cause he was always just Bucky, from the day I met him. Only figured it out this one time we came limping back to his apartment, both of us beat to all hell, and Bucky’s ma, soon’s we were through the door-- _James Buchanan Barnes!_ ”

And Clint knows enough of Steve’s history--most everyone does because it’s literally _American History_ \--from prolonged exposure to Phil, that he doesn’t need Steve to fill in any major blanks. Captain Steven Rogers and Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes, brothers in arms in the fight against Hydra and one of modern history’s most prominent soulmate pairs-- _platonic_ soulmates because society’d gotten itself all twisted up with ideas about what was “acceptable” somewhere down the line, nevermind that people had been getting paired in same-sex couples since forever ago. It was an ultra-conservative view that had ruined millions of lives, forced people to hide their bonds, bred a society filled with even more hate, led a fucked-up seven-year-old kid to believe that burning a boy’s name off his back was the only logical course of action.

Clint waves an unsteady hand at the bottle Steve’s still holding but hasn’t otherwise touched. “Two glasses of that shit’ll knock even Nat out.”

Steve blinks down at the bottle for long seconds, then finally raises it to his lips and knocks back a fair swallow. Clint knows that shit burns like the Devil from far too much personal experience, but he doesn’t think that’s got much to do with the way Steve squeezes his eyes shut as more tears leak out to pool at the down-turned corners of his mouth. Eventually, Steve manages to grate out a thick, “Thanks, Clint.”

Turning away to afford Steve a little privacy, Clint bumps their knees together, the only kind of comfort he really knows how to give.

He looks from the Winter Soldier’s dossier to Phil’s personnel file spread wide in the air around them and finally, for once in his life, makes a decision that puts himself, and his heart, first.

It’s time to get off his ass and actually start moving on from Phil Coulson.

* * *

Clint appeases Natasha’s need to meddle and lets her start setting him up on dates after his attempts end in metaphorical, and on one occasion actual, flames. The fifth one doesn’t even go that bad and they exchange info and make tentative plans to meet up again the next week, which is of course when Agent Phillip Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics DIvision walks back into his life, smooth as ever, like he hasn’t been damn well _dead_ for three years.

He still manages to pull off the unassuming look of an accountant, though at least he looks like a very successful one these days in his tailored designer suit, properly shined dress shoes, and elegant silk tie. He’s speaking, but Clint’s still trying to process him _existing_ , so the rest of it is all just white noise at the moment. It takes him a ridiculously long while to even tune in to all the animosity emanating from the others, caught up as he is in reimagining the possible.

“I don’t think you realize what you left behind,” Steve’s saying. It’s his ‘I’m righteously angry about this matter and about to punch a wall because punching you in the face is frowned upon’ tone; Clint knows it well.

And that little barb of course gets Phil’s looking just as angry as everybody else. (With the exception of Natasha, of course. She’s too well-trained to let anyone she doesn’t trust see her actual emotions. Now the Avengers, Clint knows she very much trusts, which leaves Coulson as the odd man out. Not that he can blame, though. Currently, he’s pretty lost as to what’s up and what’s down himself.)

“I left friends behind, Captain.” That’s Phil’s ‘You are so wrong; in fact, let me show you this itemized list of all the reasons why you are so wrong’ tone. Clint used to know it well, but there’s a new bite to it that’s he’s missing context for.

“I know that,” Phil continues. “I can only apologize again for the circumstances of my resurrection, and beg forgiveness. But in being gone, I was also in place to save SHIELD, and attempt to bring her back to what she was originally intended to be. That being said…”

And then Phil offers them their old jobs back. Clint could’ve told him that wasn’t going to work. Steve, for one of the most decorated military men in U.S. History (and boy, do posthumously awarded medals get confusing when a guy comes back very much alive 70 years later) actually chafes pretty damn hard when it comes to authority and command structures. Nat’s not about to throw her lot in with people she can’t trust, and as observed earlier, Coulson is no longer someone she’s willing to follow, even though she probably understands why he stayed dead in the first place better than Clint does.

Clint--well.

“It’s okay, Clint,” Nat says quietly from next to him. She leans into his shoulder to whisper, “You’re filled to bursting with regrets. This is your chance to be of rid of them.”

Clint shakes his head because this is not that. Phil’s not here for _him_.

“Идиот,” she admonishes him sharply. “People rarely come back from the dead, and only for a very good reason.”

Natasha pulls away from him and drags Tony out of the room with her, the rest following so that it’s just Clint and Phil left.

Clint clears his throat and shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Hey, sir. Uh, long time no see?” 

He’s still standing there looking every bit Agent Coulson, with his feet planted shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped loosely in front of him, but the way his eyes soften is all Phil. “I _am_ sorry about that.”

“Yeah, sure.” Clint’s not sure if it’s the shock of it all, or if he’s just so relieved to see Phil right here in front of him again, but he’s not dealing with that whole played-dead-for-three-years issue right now; it can stay pushed firmly to the back of the Dealing With It queue. “Hey, quick question,” he prefaces, then proceeds to just stare at Phil ( _alive_ Phil) and not voice any question.

“Barton,” Phil says after the silence has dragged out long enough to become awkward, “Just ask.”

“It’s more like a hypothetical, actually? ‘Cause, see, apparently you lied about being dead for _three years_. And that--that kinda fucked me up. So the way I see it, you just waltzing in here trying to recruit me again, that calls for at least a sucker punch, if not, like, a roundhouse to the face. And what I’m wondering is, if I do something that might call for the same kinda reaction, will you not react like that and we can call it even?”

Phil eyes him with a mixture of guilt, curiosity, and wariness. “Sounds fair, I suppose.”

With a nod, Clint steps towards Phil and just keeps stepping until they’re chest-to-chest, and then, before he can talk himself out of it, he lays one on him. In his defense, Clint’s only going in for a fairly modest meeting of the mouths, but Phil _moans_ right there with his lips pressed to Clint’s so that he hears _and_ feels it like some IMAX, surround sound magic, so it’s really no surprise that Clint just goes for it at that point.

As soon as Clint parts his lips, Phil’s tongue slips inside and butts up against his own, and from then on, Clint basically loses himself to a well of sensation as he goes positively light-headed with disbelief that Phil didn’t shove him away.

At some point he clearly started working on divesting (ha!) Phil of his jacket and shirt, though, because his fingers are definitely making skin contact when he starts sliding his hands down the smooth expanse of Phil’s back. And Phil letting him put his hands wherever he pleases without a hint of protest, in fact with decided encouragement as Clint is choosing to classify that groan from low in his throat? That is quite the heady aphrodisiac, he must say.

He drags his hands around Phil’s sides, resting his palms over the jut of Phil’s hip bones just because he can, and pulls away from Phil’s mouth to start trailing kisses down his neck, quickly finding that he has yet to deal with Phil’s tie. He redirects his hands to remedy that, but on the way they get distracted by the too-smooth feel of scarred tissue, a whole chunk of it, right over Phil’s heart, right where Loki--

Drawing back, his gaze immediately drops to Phil’s chest, tracing the lines of scarring from the wound and then the surgery that must have followed. And fading in and out of the patchwork skin are the dark, distinctive remnants of what were once letters--Phil’s soulmark.

Clint’s still close enough that he can see the way Phil’s tensing back up, the marginal change in his breathing as he goes from turned on and fixing to do something about it, to a low-key kind of panic. Where he was flushed just moments before, the color is quickly draining, leaving him pale and bare and open to Clint’s scrutiny for the first time since they met all those years ago.

Clint’s hand reaches out without conscious thought, mapping what’s left of the letters, trying to decipher what they might have been, who could have ever turned Phil away. Phil draws in a shaky breath and a shiver wracks down his whole body, prompting Clint to finally drag his eyes back up to Phil’s face. His expression is an odd twist of worry and hope, and looking into his eyes again after so long, Clint comes to one of his usual poorly thought-out decisions.

“You’re Unrequited.” Phil startles, his eyes going wide, and Clint lifts his shoulder and tips his head in what usually passes as an apology from him. “It was in your file. You know, the one marked Deceased right there at the top?”

All the uncertainty is wiped off Phil’s face as he drolly replies, “You’re quickly going to use up your reserve for throwing that in my face to get away with whatever you want.”

“Really don’t think so, Phil,” Clint drawls, raising a sardonic eyebrow. Phil shrugs and sighs, giving him that one. “So, right. Unrequited?”

Phil licks his lips before responding, and it’s really quite distracting. “Yes.”

“And you kissed me back. Like, with intent and all.”

“I did.”

“Okay. Cool.” Clint steps in so that his legs are bracketing one of Phil’s thighs. “I’m in. With SHIELD 2.0, I mean. Provided there’s no fraternization policy that I’m already in violation of, obviously.”

Phil surges forward to kiss him again, and there’s not a whole lot of meaningful discussion that follows.

* * *

Working with Phil again is going good. The agents that survived the Hydra fall-out and are working to rebuild SHIELD into something worthy are good people, though he’s still working on warming up to them. Getting sent out on missions with Phil occasionally barging in over comms when Clint starts to annoy May is really good, almost like old times.

And being with Phil is so _fucking_ good, pun intended most ardently. That part’s all better than good, really. Better than anything Clint ever let himself imagine, as few and far between as he ever gave himself permission to dream of impossible things.

So yeah, it’s all good. Except when it isn’t.

Like when they’re laying in bed, sated and content to just laze around while the sweat cools on their entwined bodies, or when they’re sharing a shower because conserving their water usage is something that Clint cares very strongly about, and Clint can’t keep his hand from trailing up from Phil’s belly to his chest, fingers incessantly tracing the remains of a mangled name stamped over Phil’s heart.

Clint knows better than to wish for anything more than what Fate decides to dole out to him. It was a hard-learned lesson to begin with, and yet here he is falling into the same old trap again.

Because Phil’s soulmark isn’t his name. It’s some chopped up mess that Phil’s trying to forget by letting Clint get close. And Clint should just take what he can get, really, and call it good enough, but the misshapen letters on Phil’s chest won’t let him. They haunt Clint’s dreams and, worse, his waking hours too, always right there, mocking him in stark relief.

Phil _loves_ him, he’s said as much more than once, but there’s still that lingering doubt that Clint can’t quite shake, that Phil’s just humoring him, saying what Clint wants to hear to keep him by his side until Phil decides he’s not good enough to fill in the space that his soulmate left empty.

It finally comes to a head, as these things always do, when they’re post-coital (which honestly is more often than not; Clint considers it to be a making up for lost time thing) both of them still working to get their breathing back to normal.

“It’s yours.”

Clint’s fingers twitch against the bottom of the last letter inked into Phil’s chest, the line curved now, though it was probably once straight. “What’s mine?”

“The name you’re trying not to think about.” Heart jumping up so it feels like it’s beating in his throat, Clint pushes his head up from where it’s pillowed on Phil’s shoulder to find Phil staring intently up at the ceiling. His hand comes up to cover Clint’s where it’s still resting on his scar. “It’s yours. It showed up when I was twenty-five. _Clinton_.”

Clint shifts around so that he can balance his weight on his forearm and lean up over Phil, his voice gone scratchy and rough as he asks, “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Phil’s eyes flick to meet Clint’s briefly before focussing on some middle distance. “You’re my soulmate,” he says. His voice is layered with so many things that Clint can’t pick them all out at once. “I don’t care if I’m not yours. You love me. Right here, right now, you love me, and I’ll take every minute I can get with you.”

“ _Phil_.” Clint can feel tears beginning to prick at eyes, and he blinks them back because he needs to be able to see Phil’s face for this, he needs to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is _real_. “You should have said something.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Phil’s mouth is pulled too tight, and his gaze is still just off center. Clasping his free hand around Phil’s neck so that he’s cradling his head, his thumb rubbing over Phil’s cheekbone again and again, Clint drops his forehead down to rest against Phil’s.

“You _dumbass_.” And here Clint can’t help but to laugh at them, at how the universe kept setting them up and they managed to keep thwarting its attempts until _now_. “All those years I kept trying to spot it, and you had it, what, under one of those damn nano masks? And all this time, you’ve been assuming you’re not my soulmate?”

“I--I’m not.” Phil’s staring up at him rather than past him now, eyes boring into Clint’s fucking _soul_. “You’re Unmarked.”

“I’m _not_.” Clint kisses him hard and pulls back so it smacks between them. Pulling their hands away from where Phil’s mark used to be, he moves them back over his shoulder to where _his_ used to be. Phil’s fingers shake as he passes them back and forth over the large burn scar, his eyebrows pinching together.

“Was it--”

“Doesn’t matter,” Clint cuts him off quick, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “Just--it came in when I was seven. _Phillip_.”

Phil breathes out a quiet, “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Clint’s grinning ear to ear, and slowly, Phil’s lips are moving to match him. “You’re my soulmate.”

“And you’re mine.”

Their lips meet sweetly, like a promise finally sealed. “Always was, Phil. And always will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> While I did pull some of the dialogue direct to show key parts from Clint's POV, I also wanted to flip desert_neon's wonderful story a bit and see how things might play out if Clint's mark were burned off under different circumstances. Mostly, it let me crank up the angst factor on Clint's end of things. ;)
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed my remix take on Bond Status! Thank you for reading! :)


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